Preneurship is the capacity and process of starting new things. Entrepreneurs are people able and willing to develop new ventures. Intrapreneurs are evolutionary accelerators within existing, often large, organizations. And then there is the emerging role of interpreneurs, those who start things through alliances between teams.
Most startups try to commercialize an innovation on their own. MC10 is taking a different route with BioStamp, a stretchable, wearable biomedical sensor that collects data, like temperature and heart rate. With a growing number of potential applications, MC10 has smartly chosen to not only work with the health industry, but also sports, beauty, the military, and academia.
In 2015, LearnVest, a startup launched to democratize financial planning, was acquired by Northwestern Mutual. As CEO of LearnVest and chief client officer for Northwestern Mutual, Alexa von Tobel has transitioned from entrepreneur to intrapreneur, elevating her mission to also help more households achieve financial security.
With increasingly complex and volatile environments, more and more companies are embracing design thinking, both in the development of products and services, and within their organizations. This shift is widening perspective, creating more versatile leaders, and producing important innovations.
No organization understands volatility and disruption better than the U.S. military. This is why the Army disrupted its own planning methodology, the Field Manual, to include design thinking in order to help leaders develop adaptive thinking, alternative operation plans, and increased agility in a landscape of fast-changing, increasingly complex conflicts.
More than ever, connective technologies are providing powerful mechanisms that are amplifying and realigning organizations. They’re evolving how we work, learn, create, collaborate, and produce things in the world by connecting information, data, resources, and human intelligence.
Developing a platform that leverages the Internet of Things, Cisco is helping companies capture more real-time information from more places along their supply chain than ever before. Using a networked system of connected sensors, data collection, and analytics, Cisco is uncovering hidden efficiencies and accelerating decision making up and down the supply chain.
Some of the biggest improvements across society are being found within existing ideas, industries, and infrastructures. ”Smarter, Better” is a trend that creates tomorrow by improving today.
How do you feed the world without contributing to global warming? Energy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has an answer: SUSIBA2. Sugar Signaling Barley 2 is a genetic modification to rice that diverts more of its naturally occurring carbon to its grains while increasing starch content. This not only reduces methane gas emissions, but also creates a more nutrient-rich rice.
Despite the networked, information-rich society we live in, most organizations still take an old-fashioned, product-first approach to solutions by focusing on volume, consistency, and cost. But this is changing, as some organizations are shifting to a true service-orientation that co-creates value with stakeholders.
The biggest question facing commercial space travel used to be who could afford the massive costs of disposable rockets. Now that SpaceX and Blue Origin have both shown the world that they can safely return a rocket from space, the question has changed: What do low-cost launch systems make possible for space exploration?
Today, many of us are taking comfort in a group of emerging companies that are transforming the shopping experience. Companies like MeUndies, Stitch Fix, and Blue Apron offer a service in which they provide carefully selected products delivered straight to your door every month. It’s technology combining the taste of a personal shopper with the convenience of a monthly subscription.
While closed systems are traditionally easier to control and measure, organizations are creating systems that are intelligent and flexible enough to both learn from and adapt to different circumstances and environments.
Today’s translation apps are more proof of concept than useful technology. Skype is looking to change that with its own translation engine by allowing individuals who speak different languages to meet and communicate. Beyond the social component, the business implications are huge for global corporations that are constantly battling the language barrier to sell their products, educate their employees, and deliver customer service.
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